Dwellings located in rural areas are often not supplied with fresh water by a public utility. In such cases, fresh water can be pumped from a well and delivered to the dwellings via a plumbing network. To extract well water from the well, however, a pump and a motor for driving the pump must be used to impart a force on the water sufficient to elevate the water out of the well and into the dwelling.
Pumps and motors are known to be submerged in the well water, and any other fluid, to be removed from a reservoir. The housing of submersible motors encloses the internal components of the motor and protects those components from the ambient aquatic environment. Motors that employ a capacitor to assist during the starting of the motor have conventionally had the capacitor externally coupled to a bottom of the motor housing. This requires apertures to be formed in the motor housing through which conducting leads can extend to receive electrical energy from an electrical-energy transmission network. These apertures can damage the integrity of the motor's housing, and provides additional locations where the fluid from the ambient environment can enter the interior of the motor housing.
Attempts to internally install the capacitor within the motor housing, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 6,359,353 to Bevington, which is the subject of Reissue patent application Ser. No. 10/797,931 and incorporated in its entirety by reference herein, have successfully eliminated the apertures in the motor housing through which conducting leads must extend. However, properly positioning the capacitor within the motor housing has complicated the installation process.
Similarly, conventional installation of a bearing assembly within a motor housing requires time and skill to ensure that the bearing assembly is properly situated to rotatably support a rotating member such as the rotor or the drive shaft. Conventional motors include dedicated support assemblies that are installed to support the bearing assembly at a desired location within the motor unit. The dedicated support assemblies are in addition to the existing components of the motor, and increase the number of parts and complexity of the motor, making installation more costly.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a submersible motor unit with an internal capacitor that can be easily installed within the interior of the motor housing, and a motor unit that facilitates simplified installation of the bearing assembly. The motor unit should simplify the overall assembly process, and should minimize the cost of assembly.